


divine balanced beauty

by blanchtt



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 17:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15935075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: It’s over a two hundred foot drop from the top of Vernal Falls, all of it rock, and the water’s cold and fast too, so Carol sighs when she peers around the crowd, sees some girl leaning over the railing through the gap in the people around her, one hand clinging to it and leaning out over empty space with her camera in the other, trying to get the perfect picture of the rainbow the waterfall’s mist is giving off.





	divine balanced beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Five scenes from a Park Ranger Carol/Tourist Therese AU.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yosemite is captivating. It’s stunning and beautiful and harsh and it’s why she moved down here and now why she spends her free time here, too.

 

It’s got the same allure on tourists, unfortunately to a far more dangerous degree.

 

Is it because they’re from the city, Carol wonders some days, watching well-dressed women try to climb up the uneven stone steps to Vernal Falls in heels or people waving giant iPad around, trying to take selfies with them and ruining everyone else’s photos in the process. Have they just never been outside before? She’s been smacked around by the weather enough times growing up and on the job to know you don’t mess with Mother Nature, because Mother Nature’s going to win most every time. When she doesn’t it’s just a fluke, and you better not test her twice.

 

It’s a Monday in June and the sun that’s made it over the tops of the trees is just starting to warm the air enough for Carol to feel the collar of her shirt stick damp to the back of her neck, knows when she takes off her broad-brimmed hat that she’s probably going to have hat hair.

 

She’s done a decent job of the day so far, directed a family with a tired kid to the shuttle, advised people on the pros and cons of the Mist Trail versus the John Muir Trail, and given her spiel about the history and source and statistics of Vernal Falls to anyone who’d listen, made a couple bucks in unnecessary but much appreciated tips with that.

 

The top of the falls starts gets busy around eleven, families finally up and fed and dressed and on their way to various parts of the park. And that’s when Carol steps a little closer to the middle of the crowd, keeps an eye on the rails because there’d been a reminder sent out to all park employees about tourist safety and anyone who’s worked on the multiple falls in the park always cringes because that’s like trying to keep determined kids out of the cookie jar.

 

It’s over a two hundred foot drop from the top of Vernal Falls, all of it rock, and the water’s cold and fast too, so Carol sighs when she peers around the crowd, sees some girl leaning over the railing through the gap in the crowd, one hand clinging to it and leaning out over empty space with her camera in the other, trying to get the perfect picture of the rainbow the waterfall’s miss is giving off.  

 

“When is the shuttle going to be here?” some red-faced dad asks her, suddenly in her face and clearly annoyed, but Carol leaves the conversation and walks over—confidently, unlike the tourists slipping and sliding everywhere, her thick hiking boots giving her traction on the dark wet rock—holds onto the rail with one hand and smoothly reaches out with the other, gets a firm grip on her bicep, and pulls the girl back bodily.

 

The girl weighs almost nothing and she’s got a couple inches on her, so it’s not exactly hard and even if it were, it’s kind of in her job description as a ranger to keep tourists from falling off Half Dome or getting lost in the sequoia groves or kicked by a doe for trying to pet a fawn. She figures that includes pulling back obliviously suicidal tourists from meeting their fate. Carol lets go once they’re both back on relatively firm if slippery ground, steps back and watches the young woman turn towards her guiltily, shoulders hunched.

 

 _City girl,_ Carol thinks automatically, takes in the Converse and the ripped skinny jeans and the black t-shirt and the fancy camera in her hands.

 

 _Cute_ , she also thinks automatically, and luckily she has no time to embarrass herself before the man from before has followed her through the crowd, and the map is in her face again, the man shouting, “The shuttle!”

 

Carol grabs the map with a frown, waxy paper crumpling in her hand, and only shoots the young woman a look that says _I’ve got my eye on you_ , turns back to the man and puts on her best customer service smile and holds a hand out, directs him back toward the shuttle and runs through the times it’s supposed to come by from memory.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Carol runs into her again before her shift, in the fancy little Starbucks near Yosemite Falls.

 

It’s new and a lot of people hate it, but Carol loves her macchiatos too much to petition it and it supports the park, and besides the building blends into the scenery, the architecture well-planned and fitting the style of the rest of the lodges in the valley. Beats the burnt black coffee Abby brews every morning and offers to share teasingly as if Carol hasn’t politely declined a thousand times already.

 

“I’m not going to have to pull you back from another ledge, am I?” Carol asks, half-serious, question directed at the familiar young woman waiting in front of her in line. Despite the change of clothes, she’d recognize that sharp brown bob and the camera slung on a leather strap around her shoulder anywhere. “You know this one’s over a two thousand foot drop, right?”

 

The park’s lodges and campsites book up fast, only so many people fitting into one valley. They’ve got some pretty strict maximum occupancy limits now, especially with so many damn cars and campers and trailers clogging the roads meant for nineteenth-century traffic. It’s not unusual she’ll see the same faces once or twice, so it’s a pleasant surprise to run into her again, especially when the young woman turns around, blushing pink but also smiling, not looking entirely sorry.

 

“I wanted to say thank you,” the young woman says, one hand rising to rub her forearm nervously, and apologies are not what she usually hears and Carol can almost feel herself balk, an eyebrow raised in surprise. “I tend to push myself and I forgot this isn’t exactly New York City.”

 

That explains almost everything.

 

“Just don’t do it again,” Carol says, breaks out her work voice for this because she’s not just saying that as one random person to another. If she falls, there’s a hell of a lot of paperwork that’d come with it. And, of course, because she doesn’t want to see her fall either. “Wouldn’t want to see you on the evening news because of a selfie,” Carol adds, and decides to hold out her hand in a peace offering. “Carol Aird.”

 

The young woman takes it, shakes it with a full-blown smile and a firmness that surprises her.

 

“Therese Belivet.”

 

And Therese is so busy smiling and watching her that she almost forgets to let go of her hand once they stop shaking, and Carol smiles back, takes a chance, asks sincerely, “So how’d the picture turn out?”

 

She ends up leaving the café with her macchiato, Therese’s number, and the knowledge that she’s here the rest of the week.

 

She’s back at her station at Vernal Falls later, directing people to the shuttle and warning them not to lean over the railing, all the while trying to tell a group of tourists about the history of the falls when her phone buzzes in her back pocket. It’s only several hours later when she gets to take her first break of the day that she slips away from the crowd, reaches into her breast pocket and takes out her pack of cigarettes.

 

She hides behind some trees just beyond the information kiosk, back against a pine tree, lights the cigarette between her lips and breathes it in and then out before taking out her phone, swiping it open.

 

It’s the photo Therese had taken yesterday, quite good, and as insane as it is to admit it the risk Therese took paid off handsomely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You know what you should get?”

 

It’s her day off this week, Wednesday, and Carol braces her boot against the asphalt, balances on her bike and reaches up to adjust her backpack on her shoulders. She’d thought of it last night, woken up around three with the sudden idea.

 

“What?” Therese asks, glides up to her and coming to a stop with the squeak of breaks.

 

“A drone,” Carol says, and Therese snorts in a way Carol takes to mean she’d rather die than use a drone. “So, that’s a no.”

 

“Never,” Therese says with a laugh, stands on her pedals and starts to bike away, looking back cheekily.

 

Carol heaves herself forward, shouts at Therese and her unfair start, “I’m just saying it would be safer than what I’ve already seen you do!”

 

On the bike ride through the park they end up side by side where space allows it, and she learns that Therese has moved out here for graduate school, wants to be a photographer, and is here with a friend, Dannie, that Therese had been very clear was just a friend. Nothing’s said one way or another, but she’s an adult, can conclude that if it looks like a date and walks like a date and talks like a date, it probably is.

 

Tuolumne Meadows in the center of the park is by far the most beautiful part of it in Carol's opinion, and so wide and sprawling that they’re unlikely to be bothered. They find a shaded spot under a tree near the road, lean their bikes against it and take off their backpacks. From hers Carol pulls a checkered blanket out, unrolls it and takes the corners and lays it out smoothly before sitting on it cross-legged. Therese joins her, reaches into her own backpack and starts unpacking.

 

They’ve got a decent lunch set up, a mixture of non-perishable trail food Therese has pilfered form her and Dannie’s stores plus the lasagna Carol’s brought from home that they split. She learns Therese is camping, not staying at the lodge, and Therese rises quickly and greatly in her estimation.

 

And now here, eating on a blanket in a meadow, it’s easier to slow down, to look out at the grass and the trees and the valley walls and the people hiking and biking by, to slide her gaze over and find Therese doing the same, leaning back on her elbows languidly. The bridge of her nose is sunburnt despite her baseball cap, and over the collar of her tank-top Carol can see that there’s a blush of color too, just below her collarbone. It has her swallow, look away.

 

They eat in silence, talked-out for the moment, and it’s only when there’s an ice-cold touch on her arm does she let out what is definitely a yelp, nearly drops her fork and turns and finds Therese holding out a bottle of beer slick with condensation and grinning, the bottlecap already gone.

 

“Should’ve known you were a rulebreaker,” Carol says wryly, takes it gratefully and wonders what other surprises Therese has got up her sleeves.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

It was definitely a date and Therese texts her and asks when she can see her next, and Carol squeezes her into her schedule, plans a hike through the giant sequoias after her early shift because those always make for good photographs. When dusk starts to fall and they’ve walk back around slowly to their starting point, talking the whole way, she reads the way Therese looks at her, invites her back to her cabin for drinks.

 

(She loves her cabin, the kind rented only to working rangers. _Loves_. Full stop. It’s probably the best perk of working here.)

 

“Can I take your photo?” Therese asks about an hour later, a glass of wine held loose and almost empty in her hand, and Carol laughs, puts down her own on the small dining room table, turns in her seat.

 

“You’re a fan of the uniform?” she asks, teasing, and watches Therese’s cheeks go pink. She’s still in it, hadn’t had time to do much except touch up her hair and lipstick before she’d met Therese after work. But Therese unwinds from where she’s curled up on the couch, stretches so her feet touch the floor and she’s sitting at the edge of it, poised to get up.

 

“Yes,” she admits boldly, and Carol nods in acquiescence, watches as Therese walks over to her case and takes out her camera.

 

There are adjustments to be made—to the camera, to her. Therese sets up, fiddles with her camera, and there’s not a lot of space in her small cabin so she has Carol stay sitting at the table where there’s good light. Carol moves the bottle of wine and her glass out of sight first, knows if that got out her supervisor would have her head on a plate.

 

“What do you like most about the job?” Therese asks, raising the camera. There’s a soft click, and Carol tries to hold still as Therese moves around slowly, looking for the best angle.

 

“This is an interview now?” Carol asks in amusement, and despite the resolution to hold still flicks her hair, raises a hand to her chin and thinks. “The open space,” she says finally, ignores the intermittent clicking of the camera. It’s like talking to Therese before, just with something in the way. “Being outdoors.”

 

“Was it hard, as a woman?” Therese asks, and there the camera drops away, Therese watching her with serious eyes. Carol hums, shakes her head just a bit.

 

“Not unduly." She's had a good supervisor and a good team, and parks people aren't generally rude. Just usually the kind of people who just want to get away from the city, enjoy the fresh air, and refuse to be boxed into offices. Carol tilts her head, hears another click. "But maybe I’ve just had the right coworkers around me.”

 

“That always helps,” Therese agrees, steps closer and asks, “Can I try something?”

 

Carol raises her chin, invites her closer, and closes her eyes as Therese’s fingers reach out, push curls here and there, rearranging.

 

Therese is close, warm, and there is wine on her breath and sunscreen on her skin and it’s a heady mix that makes Carol's breathing race just a tick, something she hopes Therese doesn’t catch. She tries to think of something intelligent to say—about her work, about Therese's work, anything.

 

But it’s all a ploy, probably, because she’s not the only one who knows a date for what it is, and then Therese’s hand slides down her neck and to her shoulder, and Carol opens her eyes, watches as Therese steadies herself and slides onto her lap. Her hand comes to the small of Therese’s back to hold her steady, and the camera is placed on the dinning room table.

 

There is a wild side to Therese, one that does admittedly dangerous things for photographs and goes on spur-of-the-moment camping trips. But there’s also the part of her that moves across the country to pursue her dream and reads _The Yosemite_ by Muir on her free time and goes quiet in nature, big eyes watching, an admitted romantic, and Therese tilts forward and Carol takes her in her arm, kisses the curve of her neck and feels Therese’s fingers tug at the curls at the nape of her neck before Carol kisses her way up to Therese's lips. 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

The drive is, frankly, not very beautiful. That’s central California for you—just outside the park it’s nice, trees still here and there and the mountains showing off a view, and now some snow too as autumn starts to turn winter-cold. But then the highway dips into the valley and it’s all fields and fields of fruits and vegetables and then huge, sprawling fenced areas full of cattle that reek to high heaven.

 

It takes a good amount of time as it always does, but she enjoys the drive, flicks the radio on, and before she knows it there’s the ocean, off in the distance, and Santa Cruz. It’ll take another four hours to get back later, she knows from experience, but it’s a three day weekend and she’s taken Tuesday off too, vacation days payroll has been _begging_ her to take coming in handy lately.

 

They sit on the sand later, watch the waves break on the beach and the sun go down, bonfire in the cement fire pit going strong beside them. Even though Therese has a flannel tied around her waist, fashionable, Carol sits behind her to keep her warm, arms around her waist and resting her chin on her shoulder, broken only by the occasional pull at her beer bottle.

 

“Your professor’s going to get tired of seeing my face,” Carol says, roped easily into another one of Therese’s projects because she can never say no, and Therese scoffs as if insulted.

 

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

 

From anyone else it might come off as pandering, but Therese turns in her arms, follows it with a kiss and eventually presses her back onto the sand, and Carol knows from the tone of her voice and the way her hands touch her that Therese means it.

 

They don’t leave until an hour later, bonfire long burned to embers and state beach curfew disregarded, Carol whispering _rule-breaker_  and Therese laughing as they stumble around in the dark with only an iPhone app to light their way, hand in hand through the sand dunes, up to the street, and back to Therese’s apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
